You're Getting Sleepy

Perhaps I’m getting Dopey or Sneezy instead. Like many people my age, I am having some nighttime issues … sleeping, that is. Well, that’s all I want to talk about anyway. I can get to sleep instantly, TV on and loud, the remote raised and still clutched in one hand, newspaper falling out of the other, bedside lamp on. It’s staying asleep that’s been the problem. Some nights I am up about every hour to hour and a half. And some nights I basically sleep until the morning alarm.

I was told by a friend that if I were a woman, I would be informed it was hormones. For men, we’re shunted right to the sleep clinic.

One of my problems with specialists is they want to put whatever is happening to you in a neat cubbyhole, a convenient diagnosis of a disease du jour, the ones they are just sure you have. I’ve been through this before a few years back when I had a cough that wouldn’t go away. I went to several different specialists, all of whom had their own idea of what was wrong with me and that differed from each and every other specialist I consulted. There never was a consensus about what I had and the cough just stopped one day.

So, before the foregone conclusion that the doctor is going to tell you to spend the night in the sleep lab, he asks questions and examines you in order to see if going to the sleep lab is called for. Seems like sleep apnea is the holy grail for these guys. Whatever is going on, it must be sleep apnea. If not, it’s restless leg syndrome. By the way, had you ever heard of restless leg syndrome (unless you or someone you know actually suffered from it) before those ads on TV?

Here are some questions and my responses:

1. Do you wake up gasping for air or short of breath? No.
2. Does your wife observe you stop breathing when you’re snoring? No.
3. Do you have night sweats? Only about twice a year.
4. Are you depressed? No.
5. Are you or have you ever ….. No.

He went through all the obvious things that would indicate a sleep apnea problem, none of which seemed to apply to me. However, just because you have no obvious symptoms of sleep apnea, you can still have it anyway. Got that? And he made me an appointment to spend a night at the hospital’s sleep lab.

If you haven’t gone through this, I will tell you the following: You have to be there at least an hour and a half before you would normally go to sleep since it takes about an hour plus to wire you up. For a “simple” test, you get over 30 electrodes glued to your legs, back, stomach, shoulders, neck, face, and all through your scalp. Wires run up your clothes and join those on the top of your head. From there, they all go into a console. Add a blood oxygen monitor on your index finger and an oxygen meter taped to your upper lip and stuck up your nostrils, and you’re ready for a good night in the hay.

I was restless all night, waking up more than I do at home and staying awake for long periods of time. Knowing I was being watched, taped, monitored, I took pleasure in saying “%$#&. I really hate this” a few times. They told me the next morning I had slept about fie hours and that had over 1,000 pages of data to analyze before I met with the doctor in about two weeks.

RESULTS: I was asleep 4.5 minutes after the technician turned off my light and closed the door. I was in bed about 7.5 hours and slept on and off about 5 of those hours. Lots of technical stuff that boiled down to: “We’re not sure why you have intermittent insomnia so let’s experiment with a few things.” Well, at least I’m not being forced to wear a CPAP … yet.